I arrived at the oral surgery office today, three minutes late for my appointment. When I went to check in at the desk I was told, "The server is down," and then asked, "Have you been here before?" A few minutes later I was told they would have to reschedule my appointment, which, of course, they could not do right then, but only when the server comes back up.
I wondered what message the office person, in her colorful scrubs, with her pink clipboard and heavily (but beautifully) mascara'd eyes, was getting from the half of my face above the face mask. I'm pretty sure my eyes and forehead conveyed a full measure of irritation and unhappiness. It's not like they were telling me, good news, I wouldn't have to get this tooth pulled after all!
(If you're asking why computers going down means you can't pull a tooth -- I dunno -- probably something about images stored on the server from an earlier visit to a different office of the same practice.)
By 2:30 this afternoon, the appointment time, I had invested approximately 20 hours of dread in this trip to the oral surgeon. And yes, I am counting hours spent dreading the appointment while sleeping and not sleeping, as well as the usual waking hours. There are many layers to this. I am not new to having teeth pulled (nor to root canals). Dragging myself through this includes the yuck of standing in line at the pharmacy to pick up after-appointment prescriptions with my mouth still stuffed full of cotton. Also, tooth decay and gum disease are reminders of mortality to me. My mouth is dying faster than other parts of me. (Read more: "Dust to dust" from Ash Wednesday 2006.)
It was a beautiful April afternoon -- delicate green leaves just emerging in the trees overhead against a soft blue sky. I am not without blessings, including friends who listened to my griping and returned more sympathy than I deserve. Instead of the milk shake I was planning to have for diner, I've enjoyed a chopped salad, a chocolate chip cookie, and an Edmund Fitzgerald Porter.
It's been a long year of COVID worry, isolation, and inaction. Just like the seven-year-old version of me, I'm looking for a good ending to this story. But it's in process; we're barely able to draft the story of how we come out of this, while trying to figure out how we join up that story with the one we were telling back at the beginning of 2020.
Roadblocks appear -- today, for me, a cancelled dentist appointment, and yeah, much bigger problems in the big world in which I play only a bit part. I guess we wait until morning, when we're back online again, and get back at it.
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